1 Developing Game-Like Instructional Modules to Enhance Student Learning in Lower Level Core Computer Science Courses Jinghua Zhang zhangji@wssu.edu Phone: 336-750-3324 Mustafa Atay ataymu@wssu.edu Rebecca Caldwell caldwellr@wssu.edu Elva J. Jones jonese@wssu.edu Department of Computer Science, Winston-Salem State University, Winston-Salem, NC 27110 ABSTRACT Struggling with the lower level core Computer Science (CS) courses is the main barrier preventing students from declaring the CS major and retaining students in the program. In this poster, we present our project of developing game-like instructional modules to enhance student learning in those gatekeeper courses namely Computer Programming I, Computer Programming II and Data Structures. Several modules have been developed and evaluated in the computer programming courses at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU). Initial assessment results show that game-like instructional modules had a positive impact on student learning. Significance and Relevance of the Topic Statistics have shown that fewer African Americans are pursuing CS degrees relative to their proportion of the overall population [1] and among those who do major in CS very few are employed as programmers [2]. Many minority students have fears of programming, which is one of the major contributing factors for the above troubling situation. Recently, there has been increasing demand for programmers who can develop applications for mobile devices generated by the emerging mobile computing technologies. This is a great opportunity for minority computer scientists to influence the computing industry by developing apps that are targeted to not only African American populations but also the general public. Many novel approaches have been proposed to increase CS enrollment and student retention [3- 5]. Incorporating games in the computing field is one of the most remarkable approaches and has a record of success, especially in using games to teach introductory courses (CS1/CS2) [4,5,6]. The Games doubled the incoming undergraduate enrollment in the Department of Computer Science at University of Southern California (USC) [7] and will broaden participation in CS and create an immense impact on student learning [8]. Our project aims to help WSSU, an HBCU, to enhance CS education, attract new minority and female students to pursue the CS major, and eventually help the enrollment and retention of underrepresented students and increase the pool of qualified minority graduates in this field. The project involves implementing three components: Education, Assessment and Dissemination. The Education Component includes developing game-like instructional modules for lower level core CS courses. These course modules will allow Students to learn the difficult concepts in a gaming context. The Assessment Component includes establishing an advisory board for the project and implementing the evaluation plan. The Advisory Board, which consists of experienced CS faculty, education faculty and professionals from the game industry, will assist in project development and the evaluation process. Faculty and students will be involved in the